India threatened by changes to the monsoon: Greenpeace

Times of India: The Indian monsoon, the country's lifeline, will be significantly affected by climate change, says a report released by the NGO Greenpeace on the eve of World Environment Day. The report, Monsoon Wager: Climate change and the Indian Monsoon, says climate change could bring about significant change to the intensity, geographic distribution and inter seasonal breaks in the monsoon, which would have enormous social consequences.

"The lives of millions of Indians, farmers, city dwellers, even those trading on the Mumbai Sensex, depend on the monsoon. The unprecedented flooding that Mumbai experienced in 2005 is estimated to have caused a direct loss of about Rs.450 crore," said Vinuta Gopal, climate and energy campaigner of Greenpeace. "Mumbai and India cannot allow the delicate balance of the monsoon to be thrown awry; we cannot afford to adapt if the monsoons are impacted, we simply have to stop that from happening."

…Siddharth Pathak, Climate and Energy Campaigner, Greenpeace, said: "India has not been a historical contributor to the problem of climate change, but it has a lot to lose from the effects that climate change will have on its land and people. "Given that the science calls for drastic action to prevent a climate catastrophe, even developing countries such as India cannot afford to ignore the situation and need to move away from a 'business as usual' carbon intensive growth path."

Monsoon clouds over Nagercoli, India, shot by PlaneMad, Wikimedia Commons, under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2